THe Onion's weekly "calendar section" called AV Club is a little more serious and a good source of info. The film reviews are generally very good and the online edition always has cool little lists and pieces like this....

My Favorite Movie Year

Going on the premise that 2007 has been one of the best years ever (I don’t get that, but their not alone lotsa critics are singing the praises of 2007).

Each of the critics nominates their favorite year for flicks, under the rule:

“To qualify as "the best ever," a movie year needs to be both bounteous and pivotal”.

They give the year a little run down of memorable flicks. They picks a top 5, some sleepers, etc. They also pick two runner up years. They’re generally fun reads.

Of course my being a self-centered egomaniac, I always immediately glaze over and start thinking “what's my favorite movie year”?

While Keith Phipps went with 1967 with 1982 and 1942 as his runners-up.

Moving along chronologically Noel Murray takes a good one with 1974 and follows up with 1955 and 1996.

Tasha Robinson oddly takes 1986 with a better 1940 and the awsume 1975 as a runners-up.

And finally Nathan Rabin takes 1994 and adds another great year 1973 as his runner up and (are my eyes deceiving me?) he's the second person to have 1996 as a runner-up.

Interesting no one took the overrated 1939

But MORE IMPORTANTLY, what year will I pick?

I want a year that they haven't mentioned. Let's see... Dang-nabbit! I think my first three picks woulda been '73, '74 & '75! They took em, though two were wasted as mere runner-ups.

Let's see going back... 1946 ain't half bad, it's got...

The Best Years Of Our Lives (Wyler), The Big Sleep (Hawks), The Children Of Paradise (Carne), The Dark Mirror (Siodmak),

It's A Wonderful Life (Capra), The Killers (Siodmak), Miracle on 34th Street (Seaton), My Darling Clementine (Ford), Open City (Rossellini), The Postman Always Rings Twice (Garnett), The Stranger (Welles), The Yearling (Brown) and maybe best of all Notorious (Hitchcock).

Jumping forward '68 was a monumental year.

It produced many of my favorites like The Boston Strangler (Fleischer), Burn! (Pontecorvo), Dark Of The Sun (Cardiff), Once Upon A Time In The West (Leone), Night Of The Living Dead (Romero), The Party (Edwards), The Planet of the Apes

(Schaffer), The Swimmer (Perry) and best of all Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski).

But I'm a 70's kinda kid. That's my favorite decade for everything (music, movies, books, my own life), picking though the scraps they left me. I think it might just have to be 1972 with such favorites as

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (Herzog), The Candidate (Ritchie), Deliverance (Boorman), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Bunuel), Duck, You Sucker (Leone), Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (Allen), Frenzy

(Hitchcock), then of course The Godfather (Coppola), Horror Express (Martin), Murmur of the Heart (Malle), The Poseidon Adventure (Neame), Play It Again, Sam (Ross) and Sleuth (Mankiewicz)

Wow, I'm sure I'm missing more good stuff

And staying in the decade my first runner-up would be 1979. A great year for the serious and genre stuff

The Tin Drum (Schlondoriff)and The Warriors (Hill). And I’d have to include 1941 (Spielberg) many hate it, but it was a fav growing up and I still dig it.

And if you’re keeping score at home my other runner up will be...1999.

Remember this crazy cool year? And I’m not including American Beauty which hasn’t aged well with me.

But look at all this other stuff from ‘99... All About My Mother (Almodóvar), American Movie (Smith), Audition (Miike), Being John Malkovich (Jonze), The Blair Witch Project (Myrick, Sánchez), Boys Don’t Cry (Pierce), Election (Payne), The End Of The Affair (Jordan), My Best Fiend (Herzog), The Insider (Mann), The Iron Giant (Bird), The Limey (Soderbergh), One Day In September (MacDonald), South Park Bigger, Longer, Uncut (Parker), The Talented Mr Ripley (Minghella)

and next to Godfather Part 2 and The Road Warrior maybe the best sequel of all time Toy Story 2 (Lasseter).

What am I missing?

Anyone have any other favorite years? I’m open.

If nothing else making these lists helps me to fill up my little list of flicks to re-rent.